The Originality of William James' Pragmatism

Sangjun Jeong (KAIST>

In the domain of thought the United States was largely dependent upon Europe in its

earlier years. Political independence in 1776 did not mean cultural independence as well.

Puritanism, rationalism, the Unitarian movement, and transcendentalism were the adap­

tations of the European concepts to the new conditions of American life. In their and

breadth, they could not compete with the European counterparts. When Alexis de

Tocqueville obsenred that Americans had no philosophical school of their own, his judg­

ment was substantially true. He further suggested that Americans had little interest in

the philosophical matters. At the same time, however, he pointed out that Americans had

a philosophical method common to the whole people. According to Tocqueville (1948: 3),

Americans had a tendency "to accept the tradition as III means of imonnation, and existing

facts only as a lesson tOi be used in dOling OItherwise and dOling better; to seek the reason of

things for oneself, and in oneself alone; to tend to results vvithout being bound to means.'"

Although the validity of this claim is debatable, it is interesting that his observation has

much in common with what is usually accepted as the basic traits of American pragma­

tism.

The tenn pragmatism was first introduced into philosophy by Charles Sanders Peirce.

He laid a foundation for the development of pragmatism as a comprehensive philosophical

system. It was William James, however, who made it widely known. It was his exposition

of pragmatism that was recei.ved and read by the world at large. In his development and

popularization of pragmati.sm, James was severely criticized for being subjective. Bertrand

Russell (1972: 818) condemned James' philosophy as "a fOinn of the subjectivistic madness."

Even pragmatists themselves opposed James' debasement of pragmatism. Peirce, despair­

ing of the development of pragmatism by James, distinguished his pragmatism from

James', naming his doctrine" 'pragmaticism' which is ugly enough to be safe from kidnap­

pers."!) Sidney Hook (1974, ix) often put his pragmatism in the social and scientific tradi-

108 ~ ~ * tion of Peirce and Dewey. Historians usually sided with Peirce, tending to discredit James'

applications of the pragmatic rule to concrete issues of life. It can be contended, however,

as Horace S. Thayer (1961: 431) argues, that James was developing a substantially differ­

ent type of pragmatism which is only superficially related to Peirce's thought. I intend to

argue for this view, through expounding and comparing what I take to be the central the­

ses of the two pragmatic philosophers: Peirce's theory of meaning and James' theory of

truth and experience. My exposition will also include the point that James' pragmatism is

in large part critical of much of American culture. Since James' ideas evolved throughout

his life and he can be seen from one's interests as a moralist, psychologist, philosopher of

faith, empiricist, metaphysician, and so forth, I will confine my discussion to James as a

pragmatic empiricist, concentrating on his later views.

Pragmatism was initially a theory of meaning, then a theory of truth, a philosophy of

life, and finally a social theory. With Peirce, pragmatism, as a theory of meaning, is a

method for making ideas clear. More precisely, pragmatism is "a method of determining

the meanings of intellectual concepts, that is, of those upon which reasonings may tum"

(CP 5. 8). How can one attain the dear meaning of intellectual concepts? Peirce provides

the fonowing pragmatic maxim:

In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical

consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and the sum

of these consequences win constitute the entire meaning of the conception (CP 5.9).

The meaning of "practical consequences" is crucial in understanding Peirce's pragmatism.

With Peirce, the term "consequence" does not mean that which foHows. When he talks

about "consequence," he distinguishes it from an antecedent and a consequent:

The consequence has only one expressed premise, caned the antecedent; its conclusion is called the

consequent; and the proposition which asserts that in case the antecedent be true, the consequent is

true, is called the consequence (Moore, 1961: 43).

1) Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers vol. 5, eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1960), paragraph 5. 414. Subsequent references win be in the abbrevi­

ated form CP 5.414.

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Peirce, by "consequence," refers to the process in which the consequent follows from the

antecedent.

"Practical" is a term similar to "consequence." Peirce defines a practical consideration as

a consideration that "certain lines of conduct will entail certain kinds of inevitable experi­

ences." In other words, it is the idea that "if one exerts certain kinds of volition, one will

undergo in return certain compulsory perceptions" (CP 5. 9). An idea of a practical consid­

eration involves an experience of conduct or volition and an experience of perception, but it

is neither ofthem. It is the relation between the idea of volition and the idea of perception.

It naturally follows that a practical consideration has relation to conduct or action.

Peirce, however, does not suggest that one has to actually perform certain actions to

explain the meaning of an idea.

No doubt, Pragmaticism ... makes thought ultimately apply to action exclusively-to conceived

action. But between admitting that and either saying that it makes thought, in the sense of the

purport of symbols, to consist in acts, or saying that the true ultimate purpose of thinking is action,

there is much the same difference as there is between saying that the artist-painter's living art is

applied to dabbing paint upon canvas, and saying that art-life consists in dabbing paint, or that its

ultimate aim is dabbing paint (ClP 5. 402 n3).

Wi.th Peirce, the meaning of an idea is explicable in terms of its practically conceived

effects. Consequently, his pragmatic maxim takes the conditional form. That i.s, if under

certain conditions, certain conceivable actions are performed, then a set of results (conse­

quents) would be observed. The sum of these ]practical effects (consequences) is, with

Peirce, the whole meaning of a conception. For example, to say a thing is hard means that

if under certain conditions one attempts to scratch it with other things, then one will

observe no scratch. According to the pragmatic maxim, the whole conception of hardness

lies in the sum oHms kind of conceived effects (CP 5.403).

In applying the theory of meaning to the idea of reality, Peirce introduces the role of the

communi.ty of investigators in determining what truth and reality are. According to him,

the conception of reality "essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY" (CP 5. 311).

Why is it so? Peirce here resorts to a theory of probability. What does it mean to say that a

man with a disease has a sixty percent chance to survive after an operation? It obviously

does not mean that if he has the operation ten times he will survive six times and win die

four times. What it means is that if the operation is performed indefinitely in a

community, six out of ten win survive. The prediction has meaning only when it is applied

to a whole community (see Moore, 1961: 65-66). Likewise, man has knowledge only when

he sees himself as a member of a community of investigators. Peirce concludes: "The opin­

ion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by

the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real" (CP 5.407).

In his definition of reality and his emphasis on the conceivability of concepts rather than

on actual performance, it is certain that Peirce is a realist. That is, he believes concepts

are general ideas and they have real external counterparts. Accordingly, what is important

for him when he applies the pragmatic rule to a concept is the greatest possible applica­

tion of the concept. Peirce says:

... of the myriads of forms into which a proposition may be translated, what is that one which is to

be called its very meaning? It is, according to the pragmatist, that form in which the proposition

becomes applicable to human conduct, not in these or those special circumstances, nor when one

entertains this or that special design, but that form which is most directly applicable to self-control

under every situation, and to every purpose (CP 5. 427).

Consequently, Peirce writes that "the pragmaticist does not make the summum bonum to

consist in action, but makes it to consist in that process of evolution whereby the existent

comes more and more to embody those generals which were just now said to be destined"

(CP 5.433).

In the final analysis, Peirce's theory of meaning is grounded in the notion of community.

In his pursuit of knowledge of the true object, Peirce does not stick to absolute certainty.

He recognizes fundamental limitations of man in attaining the absolute certainty of his

knowledge. Thus, he goes around the unknowable certainty, and instead considers the

practical effects of a conception, hoping that human community will, in the end, attain

true knowledge. This circumvention makes possible a forward movement which otherwise

might be blocked due to theoretical difficulties.

HI

With James, as with Peirce, pragmatism is a theory of meaning. It is "primarily a

method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable" (James,

1975a: 28). That is to say, the pragmatist examines the practical consequences of concepts

to ascertain their meanings. If two apparently different theories show no difference in

their practical effects, their difference is verbal and they are really the same theory. In

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this regard James foHows the pragmatic method as conceived by Peirce. However, pragma­

tism is for James more than achieving clarity of meaning. It is also a theory of truth

(James, 197581). This theory is the central doctrine of his pragmatism.2)

The main difference between James' pragmatism and Peirce's lies in the interpretation of

the terms "pragmatic" and "practicaL" While Peirce (CP 5. 412) uses "pragmatic" in

Kantian fashion as pragmatisch, referring to an experimental and purposive type of mind,

James (1975a: 28) derives the ten'll from the Greek pragma meamng action. By the term

"practical," which Pe:irce uses as a relational concept, James (1975b: 113) means "the dis­

tinctively concrete, the individual, particular, and effective, as opposed to the abstract, g'sn­

eral, and inert." Hence, whereas Peirce seeks the meaning of ideas in a general formula of

conceivable effects, James (1975b: 118) focuses upon the "functional possibilities" of ideas in

specific human action. As Dewey (1973: 45) points out, James :is more of a nominalist, while

Peirce is a realist. "The whole function of philosophy," James (1975: 30) says, "ought to be to

find out what definite di.fference it wm make to you and me, at definite instants of our life,

if this world-formulla or that wo11'ld-formulla be the true one." James' pragmatism is a device

enabling an individual in specific instances oflife to discover and attain true beliefs.

James' theory of truth does not presuppose the complete demal of the traditional copy

theory of truth. With him truth is a property of certain of our ideas, not of realities. In

other words, realities are not true or false, but simply are. They are independent of us.

Truth of ideas means their agreement with realities while falsity means their disagree­

ment with realities (James, 1975a: 96, 108).

However, in determining the meaning of "agreement '!'rith reality," James' theory stands

in sharp contrast with the cO:rl:'espondence view.

To 'agree' in the widest sense with a reality, can only mean to be guided either straight up to it or

into its surroundings, or to be put into such working touch with it as to handle either it or something

connected with it better than if we disagreed. Better either intellectually or practically! (James,

1975a: 102)

2) James' theory of truth constitutes the most controversial part of his philosophy. As a master of

style, James gives various formulations of the theory. To his sympathizers the theory is rich, orig­

inal and infinitely suggestive. To unsympathetic critics, however, it is fun of inconsistencies and

contradictions. In order to understand James' conception of truth, it is important to remember that temperamentally he is a man who talnls larger views. He is not much interested in arriving

at a formal definition of truth. Thus, it is essential to see the spirit of his writings instead of

technical details. James once complained that his critics "have boggled at every word they could

boggle at, and refused to take the spirit rather than the letter" (James, 1975b: 99).

More specifically, James (1975b: 117) defines agreement to mean "certain ways of

'working,' be they actual or potential." If one takes "working" in the ordinary sense as the

criterion of truth, one will criticise James' view for being subjective and irrational. If that

is not the case with James, what does he mean by "working"? For James (1975a: 34-35),

"working" means the mediation between a stock of old opinions that an individual has and

a new experience that he meets. James says:

[New truth] marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of

continuity. We hold a theory true just in proportion to its success in solving this 'problem of maxima

and minima.' But success in solving this problem is eminently a matter of approximation. We say

this theory solves it on the whole more satisfactorily than that theory ... That new idea is truest

which performs most felicitously its function of satisfying our double urgency. It makes itself true,

gets itself classed as true, by the way it works (1975a: 35-36. Italics mine).

With James, truth is a comparative notion. When he says an idea is true, it means that

that idea is truer than another in a specific instance (Browning, 1984: 1). In other words,

that idea works better than another. Truth means a process of the growth, a growth which

entails that an idea becomes truer.

The truth of an idea is verified in a process of inquiry within which both ideas are exam­

ined in regard to their fitness for working in a concrete situation.

True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those

that we can not. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is

the meaning oftruth, for it is all that truth is known-as (James, 1975&: 97).

Thus, truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it as the copy view claims.

James says:

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes ture, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a

process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its

valid-ation (l975a: 97).

The problem here is that the verification of both ideas is not experienced in actual fact.

What we can experience is one of our contradicting ideas in the process of being verified up

to now. We can never be absolutely certain that one idea is truer than another in fact

(Browning, 1984).

In James' framework, therefore, the truth of an idea is limited to time and situation.

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When James says one knows a belief is true, he means that one experiences the verifying

of the belief in a specific instance relative to one's other contrary beliefs, and in a given

moment it is truer than the other. Truth is no longer something permanent or static. It is

relative and dynamic. James says:

How plastic even the oldest truths ... really are has been vividly shown in our day by the transfor­

mation of logical and mathematical ideas, a transformation which seems even to be invading

physics. The ancient formulas are reinterpreted as special expressions of much wider principles,

principles that our ancestors never got a glimpse of in their present shape and formulation (1975a:

37).

Truth turns its face towards the future, hoping "a potential better truth to be established

later ... absolutely" (James, 197581: 107).

With James, the agreement of an idea with reality means the process of its verification.

When an i.dea is verified, it agrees with reality. When it agrees, it works and is true. The

assumption here, with James, as with Peirce, is that we cannot have certainty as to our

true beliefs. The only possible way is to put an idea or beliefin the realm of experience and

observe the results which it produces. In this process, James' primary emphasis is upon

the action and the result. This does not mean that he ignores the relation between an idea

and the result. James formulates his version ofthe pragmatic maxim as follows:

To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what conceiv­

able effects of a practical kind the object may involve-what sensations we are to expect from it,

and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception ofthese effects, whether immediate or remote,

is then for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive signifi­

cance at aU (197511,: 29. Italics mine).

It is certain that he includes the relation between an idea and the result in his rule.

However, his main concern is with the sensations and reactions. Following Peirce's terms,

James i.s primarily concerned with the antecedent and the consequent, and secondly with

the consequence, while Peirce is concerned mainly with the consequence (Moore, 1961).

This change in emphasis is mainly because James is primarily concerned with the definite

difference a true belief can make to an indi.vidual at a defini.te instance of life. As Dewey

(1973: 46) points out, James is a humanist, whereas Peirce i.s above all a logician.

However, at the same time that he stresses the particular difference a true belief effects,

as Thayer (1981: 152-53) points out, James does not disregard objective and socially

shared controls over truth and falsity. James says:

We must find a theory that will work, and that means something extremely difficult; for our theory

must mediate between an previous truths and certain new experiences. It must derange common

sense and previous belief as little as possible, and it must lead to some sensible terminus or other

that can be verified exactly. To 'work' means both these things (l975a: 104).

Working truth is subject to the objective procedure of verification, and should be accept­

able whether socially or otherwise. With this constraint, James (1975a: 98) remarks of a

working idea that" 'it is useful because it is true' or that 'it is true because it is useful.'

Both these phrases mean exactly the same thing."3)

In his theory of truth, James makes pragmatism develop from a theory of analyzing the

uses of language to a method for solving problems of life. In so doing, he shifts the empha­

sis of pragmatism from universality to particulari.ty. He is concerned with the particular

di.fference a true belief can make to a particular individual at a particular instant of life.

However, James does not ignore the existence of society as a controller of truth and falsity.

James describes his philosophical attitude as that of radical empiricism. According to

him (1975b: 6), "the establishment of the pragmatist theory of truth is a step of first-rate

importance in making radical empiricism prevail." James is an empiricist. He admits

nothing into his philosophy that is not directly experienced and exclu.des nothing from it

that is directly experienced. However, James' empiricism is distinguished from traditional

empiricism. His is radical. It is radical in the sense that the relations between things are

held to be as real and as much a part of experience as are the things themselves (James

1975b; 1975c). British empiricism, specially that of David Hume, was atomistic. According

to Hume (Perry, 1975: 173-76), everything is a bundle of distinct impressions and ideas.

That is, an of our perceptions are distinct and separate. The mind never perceives any real

connection among distinct existences. Everything is disassociated from everything else.

3) Thayer lists three qualifications for James' win to believe, which is an earlier version of James'

pragmatic theory of truth: 1) the choice of a belief rather than another is "live," "forced," and "momentous"; 2) the evidence for or against the chosen belief is equal, or admits of no rational

adjudication of one over the other; 3) the effect of the chosen belief is a "vital benefit" (Thayer, 1967: 433-34). Thus, it is evident that with James true belief does not mean a matter of private

desires or willing.

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One way to solve the problem of relating disjunctive things is to introduce a transcendent

principle of explanation, for example, Absolute mind as in absolute idealism or a priori. as

in Kant.

James rejects this type of non-empiricist solution and contends that the cause for

Hume's failill'e was that Hume was not radical enough in his empiricism. James says:

Radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at their face vallue, holding them to be as real as the

terms united by them. The world it represents as a collection, some parts of which are conjunctively

and others disjunctively related (l975c: 52).

James' contention is that man actually does experience relations. For example, when man

hears two bell strokes consecutively, he experiences the second stroke as related to the

first. If this is not the case, he would not experience the second stnJlke. Likewise, when

man sees two things, for example, at desk and a chair, at a given moment, he sees them as

related to each other :in space (see Moore, 1966: 136). Thus, James' argument for the reali­

ty of relations eliminates the necessi.ty for at trans-empirical explanation and provides con­

tinuity within the flow of experience. James stresses that his view enables us to explain

our experience on its ovm term. James summarizes his view as follows:

Radicall empiricism consists first of a postuiate, next of a statement of fact, and finally of a gener­

allized conclusion.

The postulate is that the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shalll be things

definable in terms drawn from experience ....

The statement of fact is thai the relations between things, conjunctive as wen as disjunctive, are

just as much matters of direct particular experience, neither more or nor less so, than the things

themselves.

The generalized conclusion is that therefore the parts of experience hold together from next to

next by relations that are themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe

needs, in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a

concatenated or continuous structure (1975c: 6-7).

James' empiricism, combined with the pragmatic maxim, gives rise to a cognitive theory

fundamentally diffel."l."ent from the previous view. Traditionally, both empiricists and ratio­

nalists have assumed two separate entities, the knOWillg subject On the one hand, the

known object Oll the other. According to their view, the process of knowing the object takes

place wholly within the knOWillg mind, wh.ereas the object is entirely unaffected by the

knowing process. This framework gellerates the probelm of brid.gillg the "epistemological

chasm" (James, 1975b: 81) between the knower's mind and the known object. As James

sees it, the question here is whether knowing is a saltatory relation or an ambulatory one.

Traditional theory, according to James (l975b: 79-80), considers knowing a saltatory rela­

tion. That is, the mind leaps upon the object, or the object leaps into the mind. There are

no intermediaries in the process of knowing.

For James knowing is an ambulatory process. Knowing is a process between one part of

our experience and another through intervening experiences:

Cognition, whenever we take it concretely, means determinate "ambulation," through intermedi­

aries, from a terminus a quo to, or towards, a terminus ad quem (1975b: 81).

In the process of knowing, there is a knowing mind at one end, and the object to be known

at the other. Between the two is a flux of experience. To know an object is to follow an idea

which leads one through a stream of experience up to an object to be known. Thus, know­

ing is to complete the actual process and knowledge is the result of the operation of the

process.

Knowledge of sensible realities thus comes to life inside the tissue of experience. It is made; and

made by relations that unroll themselves in time. Whenever certain intermediaries are given, such

that, as they develop towards their terminus, there is experience from point to point of one direc­

tion followed, and finally of one process fulfilled, the result is that their starting-point thereby

becomes a knower and their terminus an object meant or known (James, 1975b: 63).

If knowledge is made through the operation of the knowing process, knowledge of an

object changes as new experiences are added to it. This means that absolute knowledge is

only theoretically possible. Man would have absolute knowledge when he reaches a point

where all possible experiences have been had. Actually, however, man cannot know

whether no further new experiences are possible or not. An knowledge is provisional. If

there exists an external reality, man's knowledge of it is only an approximation of it. Man

can only approach the "brink" and "fringes" of reality.

Our whole notion of a standing reality grows up in the form of an ideal limit to the series of succes­

sive termini to which our thoughts have led us and still are leading us. Each terminus proves provi­

sional by leaving us unsatisfied. The truer idea is the one that pushes farther; so we are ever beck­

oned on by the ideal notion of an ultimate completely satisfactory terminus (James, 1975b: 88-89).

Ether-waves and your anger, for example, are things in which my thoughts win never perceptually

terminate, but my concepts of them lead me to their very brink, to the chromatic fringes and to the

hurtful words and deeds which are their really next effects (James, 1975b: 69).

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Through the process of knowing, things are known. Man attains the knowledge of the

objects. At the same time, it becomes the point of departure of attaining new knowledge in

the new knowing process. This means that with James, as with Peirce, the search for

attaining knowledge is a never-ending process. Thus, knowledge is not retrospective, but

prospective. It is oriented toward the future. It looks away from "first things, principles,

'categories,' supposed necessities," but looks towards "last things, fruits, consequences,

facts" (James, 1975a: 32). Accordi.ng to Dewey (1942: 54), James, through his combination

of the pragmatic method and empiricism, "opened up paths of access to nothing less than a

revolutionary change in traditional empiricism."

This notion of knowing as the endless process rejects the presupposition that the world

is already determined and constructed. The evolution of the universe has not completed.

The universe is "unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places where

thinking beings are at work" (James, 1975a: 124). If what the universe is to become has

not been determined, then man has room for making it decide its conclusion. This view is

sharply contrasted with the doctrine of pessimism which assumes that the fate of man and

the universe is determined and thus the salvation4) of the universe is impossible. James

labels this attitude as "tough-minded." At the other extreme is the doctrine of optimism to

which in tum the salvation of the world is inevitable. James names this view "tender-

minded" (James, 1975a: 137). James' attitude is in-between, which he calls the doctrine of

meliorism. "Meliorism," James (1975a: 137) says, "treats salvation as neither inevitable

nor impossible. It treats it as a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability

the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become." In James' visi.on, the out­

come of the evolution of the universe will be decided, at least in part, by human elements.

It is possible to make a world in which man is saved and human values are preserved.

However, there is no guarantee for that. It is only possible if human bei.ngs work together.

James says:

Suppose that the world's author put the case to you before creation, saying: "I am going to make a

world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condi­

tion being that each several agent does its own 'level best.' I offer you the chance of taking part in

such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may

4) Here, James does not use the word 'salvation' in a religious sense. He tens his audience to inter­prete it in any way they like (Pragmatism, p. 137).

win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will you join the pro­

cession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?" (James,1975a:

139)

With James such a world is the world man actually lives in. He believes a healthy-minded

man would accept the offer to participate in making such a world good. His philosophy is

thus an attempt to "make some positive connexion with this actual world of finite lives"

(James, 1975a: 17).

James' pragmatism is a philosophy whose footing is firmly on the ground. In his pursuit

of true knowledge, James, like Peirce, does not seek to discover the absolute point of

departure outside the sphere of experience. He starts from where he is. He believes that

there is no other place to start. Thus, James rejects an absolutist view. He does not believe

he can know he knows absolute truth i.n any given moment. This does not mean that

James denies the existence of truth. If he denies it, he blocks the way to inquiry, and thus

win not try to find any truth that might exist. According to James, truth exists omy in the

future. Man cannot know he knows it at any given moment. Instead, man makes truth

become truer in the process of verification, hoping in the end he can attain the truest. In

James' framework the future is open-ended.

Thus, James' pragmatism has a metaphysi.cal implication. The notion of truth as the

process of becoming takes the future as being in the process of formation, or being "plastic."

The making of the universe has not been finished yet. Here, the role of an individual as a

constructing entity assumes an important meaning. Through his thought, with the inter­

mediary role of action, he can make the future. In James' universe, an individual becomes

a creative agent.

The notion of the future in the making has, however, an additional level of meaning. At

the same time that the unfinished world provides man with possibilities of action, it

becomes the source ofthe precarious and hazardous nature of our existence. For, it is arbi­

trary which direction of change the unfinished world will take. The world is at scene of

danger, :risk and adventure. In order to control and predict an unstable human existence,

ideas are adopted and actions are taken according to the ideas. Despite all of these

attempts, however, James says, "ineluctable noes and losses form part of[life] '" there are

genuine sacrifices, and .... something permanently drastic and bitter always remains at

the bottom of [life]" Here, James' pragmatism assumes what Hook calls "the tragic sense

of life" (Hook, 1974: 5).5) It is the outcome of the acknowledgment of inescapable Hmita-

119

tions of human intelligence and actions. In this light, James' hope to approximate reality

and never-ending pursuit to attain true knowledge take on a different meaning. His

attempts are imbued with an existential strain. Pragmatic action becomes something like

an existential struggle. Underneath the optimistic and active surface of James' pragma­

tism lies a deep recognition of a precarious and haphazard human condition and the fun­

damentallimitations of mall. to deal with it. In brief, James' pragmatism is rooted ill. the

awareness of a tragic sense of life.

v

In considering James' pragmatism ill. its relation to American society and culture, it has

been often suggested that his theory was the characteristic expression of American mind.

That is, James' conception of the universe in the p:rocess of formation and his emphasis on

the i.mportance of the individual and human action were the reflection of the prevailing

temper of his time in America. His theory emerged out of a need to record a unique experi­

ence of America. According to Ralph H. Gabriel,

it was inevitable that the majority of Americans in the post-Appomattox generation of William

James should believe in the efficacy of individual effort to bring about material and social change.

The tide ofindustrialism was sweeping over America as the bore roars up the Bay of Fundy. As new

cities rose and new industrial empires came into being, it was difficult not to believe with Henry

Demarest Lloyd that man is the creator of society. All current popular American faiths, the gospel

of wealth, the religion of humanity, emphasized the creative role of the active individual. James

went with his age (1956: 338).

From this perspective, James' theory emerged out of a need to record a unique experience

of America, and the emergence and wide acceptance of James' philosophy were not a his­

torical accident (Gabriel, 1956; Novack, 1975). It was a philosophy suitable for a country in

the becoming and growing. For sympathizers with American culture, such an emergence

5) Hook first used this phrase when he interpreted Karl Marx in pragmatic terms in the 1930s.

According to Hook, Marx never thought that a socialist society could realize a perfect society.

Marx recognized inherent limitations and failure of human experience. Nevertheless, with Marx,

the unattainabHity of a perfect society does not justify the existence of any kind of man or society.

Thus, as Hook sees it, Marx' theory is an attempt to approximate perfection. According to H()ok,

under Marxism, man ceases to suffer as an animal and suffer as man. In brief, Marxism is

grounded in the rec()gnition of the tragic sense of life. Hook finds this strain in James' pragma­

tism, too.

meant the attainment of originality in American thought and the eventual independence

of America from the European cultural colonialism. At the same time, for critics, it meant

the embodiment of American materialism and justification of big business (Suckiel, 1982).

Without doubt, certain relations exist between a culture and a philosophy that is born

therein. However, the relations are not causal connections. In general, the generalizations

of the relations between the two are something less than meaningful. In addition, it is a

characteristic of philosophy to live on its past. Each philosopher makes use of the materi­

als, methods, and insights that his predecessors have developed. Even when he rejects the

heritage, his rebellion is possible only assuming the existence of the past. A philosophy

cannot be typical of a time or a nation in the ultimate sense. Pragmatism is not an excep­

tion to this. In its case, the past was the European philosophy. In its employment of basic

concepts, technical doctrine and systematic organization, pragmatism is not typically

American at all. For instance, as mentioned, the term "pragmatic" itself was adopted by

Peirce through his study of Kant. James dedicated his book Pragmatism to John S. Mill

from whom he first learned pragmatic o>penness o>f mind. If pragmatism, being rooted in

European thought, should be understood in the context of the European philosophical his­

tory, it does not sound convincing to contend that his pragmatism is the first indigenous

American philosophy since it reflected American life or mind.

If pragmatism should be understood :in the history of Western philosophy, it could be

argued against James that his idea is the sum of the diverse i.nfluences of other philoso­

phers. For example, subtract from James' pragmatism Peirce's pragmatic maxim and what

Max Fisch (1954: 413-44; 1964: 465) suggests as the influencing forces in the genesis of

pragmatism, such as Bain's theory of helief, Darwinian evolutionary theories, British

empiricism, German psychologists, and so on. If the results of these receptions were elimi­

nated, almost nothing would be left of James' pragmatism. Then, what does it mean when

it is said that James' pragmatism is original? Here, again, Dewey provides an illuminating

insight.

[James'] pragmatism ... presents itself as an extension of historical empiricism, but with this fun­

damental difference, that it does not insist upon antecedent phenomena but upon consequent phe­

nomena; not upon the precedents but upon the possibilities of action. And this change in point of

view is almost revolutionary in its consequences (Dewey, 1973: 50).

By relating the pragmatic maxim with traditional empiricism using his theory of radical

empiricism, the notion that the relations between the things are as real as the things

121

themselves, James suggested a genuinely new view of the traditional theory of truth and

knowledge. In this sense, James was original.

The argument that James' originality lies in his contribution to the whole of Western

philosophy requires that one must not see his philosophy simply as a philosophical version

of the popular American mind, nor a justification of American culture. Of course, the

American environment did have an influence upon the formulation of his pragmatism. If

the positions of his pragmatism had entirely disregarded the needs and attitudes of

Americans, it would not have been so widespread in American culture. James' pragmati­

sm, however, was not a unilateral reflection of tendencies that prevailed in American life.

It was in large part a criticism of certain of its aspects.

James was a spokesman for small countries, the underdog, the minority point of view.

He was against growing tendencies in American life, such as the fighting instinct, mob

hysteria and bigness. He saw the dangers of these tendencies in the Venezuela incident,

the Spanish-American War and American policy in the Philippines. Accordingly, James

participated in the Anti-Imperialist League. As he conceived it, imperialism was the

embodiment of the fighting instinct and the passion of mastery disguised by the profession

of benevolence (Perry, 1936: 304-18). James' abhorrence of bigness is most clearly

expressed in the following:

I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral. forces

that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many

soft rootlets, or monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with,

the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big

organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results;

and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately

unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on

the top (Perry, 1936: 317).

Considering his animosity against bigness along with his conception of the workability

of truth as a mediation between a new truth and the existing stock of old truths, it is diffi­

cult to see James' pragmatism as a philosophy advocating American materialism and the

growth of big business in America. He was critical of those tendencies. James, however,

did not develop a theory to confront the facts of industrial organization and conflicting eco­

nomic forces in American society, and to illuminate a way to deal with these matters. Even

though he did not disregard the existence of society, his primary concern was with the par-

122 ~ ~ * ticular individual. The full development of pragmatism in the direction of a social theory

had to be made by Dewey who examined ways of controlling and directing social conditions

through education or through revision of the institutions of society.

Referen.ces

Browning, Douglas (1984) "A Reconstruction of James' Theory of Truth," an unpublished article.

Dewey, John (1942) "William James as Empiricist," Horace M. Kallen (ed.) In Commemoration of

William James, 1842-1942. New York: Columbia University Press.

Dewey, John (1973) "The Development of American Pragmatism," John J. McDermott (ed.) The

Philosophy of John Dewey. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Fisch, Max H. (1954) "Alexander Bain and the Genealogy of Pragmatism,» Journal of the History of

Ideas XV: 413-44.

Fisch, Max H. (1964) "A Chronicle of Pragmatism, 1965-1879," The Monist XLVIII: 441-66.

Gabriel, Ralph H. (1956) The Course of American Democratic Thought. New York: The Roland Press

Company.

Hook, Sidney (1933) Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx. New York: The John Day Company.

Hook, Sidney (1974) Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life. New York: Basic Books.

James, William (1975a) Pragmatism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

James, William (1975b) The Meaning of Truth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

James, William (19'15c) Essays in Radical Empiricism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Moore, Edward C. (1961) American Pragmatism: Peirce, James, and Dewey. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Moore, Edward C. (1966) William James, New York: Washington Square Press.

Novack, George (1975) Pragmatism versus Marxism: An Appraisal of John Dewey'S Philosophy. New

York: Pathfinder Press.

Peirce, Charles S. (1960) Collected Papers, voL 5. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (eds.)

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Perry, John. ed. (1975) Personal Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Perry, Ralph B. (1936) The Thought and Character of William James, vol. 2. Boston: Little, Brown and

Company.

Russell, Bertrand (1920) Philosophical Essays. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.

Russell, Bertrand (1972) A History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Sukiell, Ellen K. (1982) The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James. Notre Dame: University of

Notre Dame Press.

Thayer, Horace S. (1967) "Pragmatism," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5. New York: Macmillan

Company & The Free Press.

Thayer, Horace S. (1981) Meaning and Action: A Critical History of Pragmatism. Indianapolis:

Hackett.

123

Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel de (1948) Democracy in America, vol. 2. Phillips

Bradley (ed.) New York: Knopf.